The Magnificent Montez From Courtesan to ConvertBy: Horace Wyndham (1875-)

First Page:

[Illustration: Lola Montez, Countess of Landsfeld

( From a lithograph by Prosper Guillaume Dartiguenave )]

THE

MAGNIFICENT

MONTEZ

From Courtesan to Convert

By

HORACE WYNDHAM

"When you met Lola Montez, her reputation
made you automatically think of bedrooms."

ALDOUS HUXLEY.

HILLMAN CURL, INC.

Publishers

NEW YORK

FOREWORD

Sweep a drag net across the pages of contemporary drama, and it is
unquestionable that in her heyday no name on the list stood out, in
respect of adventure and romance, with greater prominence than did
that of Lola Montez. Everything she did (or was credited with doing)
filled columns upon columns in the press of Europe and America; and,
from first to last, she was as much "news" as any Hollywood heroine of
our own time. Yet, although she made history in two hemispheres, it
has proved extremely difficult to discover and unravel the real facts
of her glamorous career. This is because round few (if any) women has
been built up such a honeycomb of fable and fantasy and imagination as
has been built up round this one.

Even where the basic points are concerned there is disagreement. Thus,
according to various chroniclers, the Sultan of Turkey, an "Indian
Rajah" (unspecified), Lord Byron, the King of the Cannibal Islands,
and a "wealthy merchant," each figure as her father, with a "beautiful
Creole," a "Scotch washerwoman," and a "Dublin actress" for her
mother; and Calcutta, Geneva, Limerick, Montrose, and Seville and a
dozen other cities scattered about the world for her birthplace. This
sort of thing is to say the least of it confusing.

But Lola Montez was something of an anachronism, and had as lofty a
disregard for convention as had the ladies thronging the Court of
Merlin. Nor, it must be admitted, was she herself any pronounced
stickler for exactitude. Thus, she lopped half a dozen years off her
age, allotted her father (whom she dubbed a "Spanish officer of
distinction") a couple of brevet steps in rank, and insisted on an
ancestry to which she was never entitled.

Still, if Lola Montez deceived the public about herself, others have
deceived the public about Lola Montez. Thus, in one of his books,
George Augustus Sala solemnly announced that she was a sister of Adah
Isaacs Menken; and a more modern writer, unable to distinguish between
Ludwig I and his grandson Ludwig II, tells us that she was "intimate
with the mad King of Bavaria." To anybody (and there still are such
people) who accepts the printed word as gospel, slips of this sort
destroy faith.

As a fount of information on the subject, the Autobiography
(alleged) of Lola Montez, first published in 1859, is worthless. The
bulk of it was written for her by a clerical "ghost" in America, the
Rev. Chauncey Burr, and merely serves up a tissue of picturesque and
easily disproved falsehoods. A number of these, by the way, together
with some additional embroideries, are set out at greater length in
other volumes by Ferdinand Bac (who confounds Ludwig I with Maximilian
II) and the equally unreliable Eugène de Mirecourt and Auguste Papon.
German writers, on the other hand, have, if apt to be long winded, at
least avoided the more obvious pitfalls. Among the books and pamphlets
(many of them anonymous) of Teutonic origin, the following will repay
research: Die Gräfin Landsfeld (Gustav Bernhard); Lola Montez,
Gräfin von Landsfeld (Johann Deschler); Lola Montez und andere
Novellen (Rudolf Ziegler); Lola Montez und die Jesuiten (Dr. Paul
Erdmann); Die spanische Tänzerin und die deutsche Freiheit (J.
Beneden); Die Deutsche Revolution, 1848 1849 (Hans Blum); Ein
vormarzliches Tanzidyll (Eduard Fuchs); Abenteur der beruhmten
Tänzerin ; Anfang und Ende der Lola Montez in Bayern ; Die Munchener
Vergange ; Unter den vier ersten Königen Bayerns (Luise von Kobell);
and, in particular, the monumental Histeriche of Heinrich von
Treitschke... Continue reading book >>